Let’s watch another Disney Channel movie! A scary one this time.
Don’t Look Under the Bed is a very underrated one, perhaps because it’s the scariest thing I’ve seen on Disney Channel besides Raven and Chelsea turning into cows or Bill Cipher gaining a physical form in the flesh. The movie opens immediately in weird circumstances. A family wakes up and gets ready for the day, in darkness, only to realize that it’s four in the morning, and somehow their clocks had all been set forward. This phenomenon turns out to be the same throughout town, with no explanation. The town is in the midst of some really bizarre and cryptic pranks, such as a school bus flooding, a swimming pool filled with gelatin, a swarm of bees in the principal’s office, and the letter B marked almost everywhere in school. (Feels like a 2020 mood).
Over time, the anonymous pranks seem to have a target, intent on framing a young no-nonsense girl named Francis.
Francis wants to pin down a logical explanation, but things get weirder as she starts getting glimpses of a boy, always spontaneously in different costume, that apparently no one else can see. Even more absurdly, we learn his name is Larry Houdini.
Larry turns out to be Francis’s little brother’s imaginary friend, visible only to children, and called to track down the culprit behind the pranks –a bogeyman. As time goes on, Larry appears to be turning slowly changing against his will. It’s revealed that imaginary friends stay with children for a healthy amount of time while they’re needed, then happily move on to make new friends. But if a child is forced to stop believing while still in need, the imaginary friend is thrown off balance and would turn into a bogeyman. The life cycle of an imaginary friend seems tied to the mental health energy of a household, and the bogeyman embodies repressed childhood trauma.
This movie makes me think of how often we deny the power of the imagination. We take fiction and entertainment for granted, we use “watching Netflix” or “reading novels” only to mean being distracted or distanced from reality, and we are quick to dismiss creative arts as real jobs or as having any impact in the world. And yet, these stories shape us. The very act of paying attention to a story may teach us empathy, the very practice of how we tell a story can influence whether someone embraces or fears something in real life.
On the less fun side, the imagination can overwhelm us. Anxiety can throw us into physical stress over situations that have not even happened, PTSD can make us relive ghosts of situations, depression gives us the illusion that hope is forever out of reach, intrusive thoughts can get really disturbing while simultaneously playing up the guilt factor, especially if you have a religious background. (Thomas Sanders did a very intriguing take on intrusive thoughts here). We tend to deny the power of that, too. We may be quick to dismiss mental illnesses we do not ourselves experience, because of what we can’t see. We are quick to brush over the real impact even manifestations of the mind can have. And suppressed trauma only makes itself known one way or another, sooner or later.
In Don’t Look Under the Bed, the imaginary friends can make tangible impacts on the real world. In a less direct way, whatever imagination we feed (or deny) has an impact on how we navigate the world, and how we impact each other. In the film we learn that Francis has been denying and suppressing her own trauma from when her little brother got leukemia. She had also gotten her brother to do the same, and told him to deny his imagination as well. While her intentions were good, shutting down the imagination also suppressed their capacity for empathy, playfulness, and hope. Simultaneously, denying the existence of monsters turns out not to be a good move. Instead, they must turn their attention to not being afraid of monsters. And maybe even confronting them.
We’re quick to say there’s no such thing as ghosts, or monsters, but just how much of the unknown are we so easily denying? Many of us believe in the spiritual, and spiritual beings, and the existence of evil. Many of us use “ghost” or “monster” to describe even humans impacted by depression or succumbing to evil. While we want to be careful not to make scapegoats of our own sins, just how fiction is the concept of monsters, really? Even/especially embodied in people, unchecked trauma in one person can be easily inherited by another. There’s a reason why we commonly call these things our “demons.”
What if we shifted our focus from denying the things to fear, to confronting the things we fear?
What if we lifted up imagination for the power it has to shape our spiritual lives and direct how we treat one another? What if we lifted up the expressions and playfulness of children, to whom it’s said the kingdom of heaven belong? (Matthew 19:14). Let’s not deny our imaginations (or our inner child), but rather, take care of them.
And what if the fleeting was also valued for its significance? The imaginary friends in this movie explain that they are only called to be in children’s lives for the time they need them, for a moment, and then they go help elsewhere. Maybe just because something doesn’t last forever doesn’t mean it wasn’t important or life-giving or spiritual. It can be something as brief as the choices in a theatrical show, still provoking a person in the audience to contemplate another point of view years to come. It can be something as grand (yet mortal) as life on earth for the person yearning too much for the afterlife. It can be some self-care that nurtures the spirit and low key saves its life. It can be something as soft as a memorable childhood friendship or a relationship in which both learned to love deeply before parting ways. Maybe we can honor the power in those things, too.
In remembering the good, responding to the bad, and holding space for our mixed emotions, we do the work of healing.
“I guess it takes a lot of imagination to be a grownup.”
“It sure does, kiddo.”
